SHEIKH SAID, GREEN ISLAND 37 



wearing as little as possible, in that damp sweltering heat 

 with our legs immersed in boiling water and mud, and our 

 trunks exposed to the heavy static air, the sweat poured off 

 us like a waterfall. 



Gigi and I were the first to venture inside. The day before, 

 near the island, I had shot a big male pelican with the rifle 

 at a range of seventy yards. This was the first specimen for 

 our collection of Massawan and insular avifauna and we 

 wanted to see if the pelicans nested among the mangroves. 

 My shot had given rise to a strange scene; as the stricken 

 bird sank soundlessly on to the water his two companions, 

 instead of flying away, swam around ruffled and worried 

 waiting for him to rise and fly off too. Priscilla and Cecco, 

 recovering the victim, got to within a few yards of them. 

 At last unable to wait any longer they rose with a whirr of 

 wings and circled over him, ten, twenty times, in silence. 

 None of us managed to rejoice in that first trophy, and even 

 now when I look at the film I shot with those two flying 

 round and round on the watery horizon, I feel full of self- 

 reproach. 



Had the pelicans got their nests in the mangroves then? 

 In we went to see. There was one pelican cruising calmly 

 between the twisted white trunks and the tall roots; like 

 Lohengrin's swan it threaded its way under the arches of 

 wood, driving the leaves before its white breast. This time I 

 didn't shoot. We continued our search, but finding nothing 

 turned to look up at the kites' nests. In that moment of 

 abstraction we narrowly missed treading on a blue-spotted 

 tan-coloured stingray (the commonest sort in the Red Sea) 

 that lay crouched in the mud. Big as a car wheel, it shot 

 through our legs. It was a miracle that we were not thrown 

 headlong into the slime, and how we missed the switch of 

 that tail I still don't know. Having had our lesson ('Don't 



